The Android 4.2.2 Update for Nexus 4 Kills Unofficial LTE Support

The Jelly Bean update for the Nexus 4 arrived 2 days after it was first seen on Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10, but it came with some undesired effects: as AnandTech reported, the update seems to disable the smartphone’s partial LTE support.

Even if Nexus 4 was never advertised as supporting LTE, its hardware is very similar to LG’s Optimus G, which supports the latest data transfer protocol i.e. Nexus 4 comes with the Qualcomm WTR1605L LTE chip and the Snapdragon SoC under the hood, just like the Optimus G.

Immediately after Nexus 4 hit the market, AnandTech and users over at XDA Developers forum managed to enable its partial LTE capability by activating some hidden settings in Android OS.

Since Nexus 4 was never designed with LTE support in mind, after “unlocking” the phone’s hardware, it was only able to use Band 4, aka AWS, mostly used in Canada and in some of the US mobile networks.

After the latest Google software update, the hidden settings are not available anymore, the backdoor was closed, sort of speak so if you intend to use your Nexus 4 to get lightning fast data transfers, you should reconsider the latest Android update, since Google’s message is very clear : LTE is not available on Nexus 4 anymore.